Saturday, 30 April 2016

So I’ve just seen Captain
America: Civil War, my expectations for it were so low you’d have to dig for
them – I loathed Civil War the comic
book and I’m still sick of the Winter Soldier from when he was Captain America Buckycap. In short – it
was brilliant (except I want to know how Cap got from America to OH VIENNA so
fast, I thought Quicksilver was dead), I’m now going to spit into the ocean by
posting about it online. I write a blog on the internet so it shouldn’t be too
much of a surprise I think my opinion is of vast importance to the human race
but my credentials include:

I’ve read every Avengers
book up until Siege, and many after that, and yes I hate what Brian Michael
Bendis did to them, but then I just hate Brian Michael Bendis’ writing on 616
books in general (Ultimate Spider-Man rocked though).

I’ve read every issue of
Iron Man up to Extremis, then some of what came later

I’ve read every issue of
Captain America up until Bucky took over, then I just stopped caring, I’ve read
some stuff since then

I haven’t quite read every
Spider-Man book up until Spider-Verse, but mostly these holes are small chunks
of Peter Parker, The Spectacular
Spider-Man and a few arcs in the wake of One More Day, I have read One More
Day and One Moment in Time though, and predictably I hated both of them, also
I’ve read every issue of Web of Spider-Man, in fact I used to own every issue of that series, fuck
knows why.

I’ve read all of Black
Panthers books also; I even slogged through Reginal Hudlin’s run, which I think
counts as self-harm, at the very least it counts as emotional self-harm.

I have no idea what
percentage of Ant-Man stories I’ve read, I’ve read all of Ant-Man’s original
run in Tales to Astonish anyway.

I’m not saying all this to
show off, it’s very hard to use hours of reading books you know you won’t like
in a dick measuring contest, I’m just saying this to show that I’m actually
pretty well qualified to talk about Captain America movies (and yes I’ve seen
the previous two, and the two Reb Brown ones).

So are you sitting
comfortably? Then I’ll begin:

1. Cap’s Kooky Quartet

There’s a lot of good
things about who turned up on Captain America’s side in the film but the fact
that his team included ‘Cap’s Kooky Quartet’ as best it could (poor Pietro)
made me even happier. For those who aren’t sad – all of the founding Avengers
quit the team pretty early on, leaving only Captain America (who was granted
founder status at some point but didn’t actually found the team), who hired
Quicksilver, The Scarlet Witch and Hawkeye to form a new Avengers line-up known
as ‘Cap’s Kooky Quartet’, the fact that all surviving members of this line-up
were on his side was so cool for an old-school Avengers fan like myself, oh and
wanna know who the first team member to join the Kooky Quartet (and make it a
quintet) was?

2. Giant Man!

Well technically he was
Goliath at that point but fuck it, it’s a good segue. I already knew that Giant
Man was going to appear because Funko showed off a Pop! Vinyl of him (nice one,
lads) but it was still brilliant. A
friend of mine pointed out how nice it was to see that they actually gave Ant
Man, Scott Lang and Giant Man different styles of fighting and movement, i.e.
Ant Man is quick while Giant Man is very slooooow, I did notice this also but
he said it first so I’m mentioning him. Everything about Lang using the Giant
Man powers was great; it was a great diversion, Iron Man’s reaction to it was
great, Spidey bringing him down while talking about The Empire Strikes Back was
great, the fact that a clone of Thor didn’t show up and kill him was great, I'm really very impressed.

3. The Vision/Scarlet Witch Ship Tease

Vision and Scarlet Witch
for life, bitches. I literally squeed when it was The Vision who saved the
Scarlet Witch in Avengers: Age of Ultron, but I quite possibly melted into a
puddle seeing them have cute domestic moments and him holding her after
the battle in the airfield, and being so ‘distracted’ by her that he
accidentally shot the wrong awesome black man, actually that’s a point:

4. Awesome Black Men

You want to know a good way
of elevating non-white characters to improve the diversity of your superhero
line of comics? Don’t replace characters with minorities causing resentment
before they’ve even had a chance to prove themselves in the suit, don’t
randomly race-lift white characters, put pre-existing non-white characters in a
high profile theatrical film and have them all be FUCKING BADASS throughout. In
a film where everyone was awesome it should show you the sheer level of
Falcon’s awesomeness that he stood out as being extra awesome, War Machine has
been superb since Iron Man, though Don Chile (who I really like) looks nothing
like James Rhoades and should never have been cast (but then all black people
look alike don’t they Ike Permutter?1) the guy’s just naturally
funny as fuck and gave Rhoadey the same charisma boost that Downey Jr gave
Stark and then there’s Black Panther, I do think Chadwick Boseman is a little
too cuddly to be T’Challa (really, he’s kind of adorable, T’Challa’s always had
harder features, probably a result of being created by Jack Kirby) but he was
great as the Panther, actually that leads us to point number 5 (Which as going
to be number 4 until I wrote number 3)

5. These Actors (and Stunt Men) Move Like the
Characters

I say this after every
Marvel Cinematic Universe film and my friends must be so sick of it but with Black
Panther and ESPECIALLY Spider-Man debuting in this film and watching Gotham and
seeing the X-Men: Age of Apocalypse trailer before the film, it all really highlighted
it. Someone has trained the people playing these characters to move like them,
I dunno who’s job this is, but they do it for everyone, Captain America doesn’t
just jump, he jumps like Captain America is drawn jumping, Spider-Man doesn’t
just crawl across things or swing on webs, he does this the way he’s drawn
doing these things, even characters where it would be less noticeable like
Black Widow or Ant-Man, they still do it. It is immeasurably useful in making
me believe that these people are these characters because, well, they aren’t
exactly comic book accurate in looks or costumes (Hawkeye remains the worst
offender).

6. Bonus Hawkeye!

I completely missed that
Hawkeye that was in this film, so when the man Falcon knew turned out to be
Clint Barton, and he rescued the Scarlet Witch (who he spent a fair amount of
Avengers issues trying to bang once upon a time), I was so happy I made an audible
noise. Now I tend to be fairly quiet watching a film for the first time in the
cinema because I’m usually paying attention – I’m half deaf and what little
hearing I have has to work really hard in a cinema environment, I find a
combination of someone talking next to me and wind a challenge on my good ear, so the combination of dialogue,
background music, sound effects, ground noise, volume, echo and Mike making
amusing comments means that my audible outbursts aren’t as common as they are
when I’m say, watching a DVD or telly programme. I made a noise for Hawkeye, I
can never decide if Hawkeye or the Vision is my favourite Avenger, both are
good for different reasons, both were horribly mistreated by Brian Michael
Bendis and both are better than Iron Man but not as good as Cap in Data East’s Captain America and the Avengers (play
it on MAME, do it now!), but besides all this the reason I got so excited was because Hawkeye was dead during the Civil
War comic book so we never got to see how he’d react and who’s side he’d pick,
now I knew full well he’d be on Team Cap (but this was the book that had Cable
– a man who grew up fighting a dictator – join Team Iron Man) but this movie made it official.

7. Cap and Agent 13’s Kiss

I made an audible noise for
this too. I am continually disturbed by how much casual shipping I engage in
and have always engaged in – this is the second item on this list to do with
relationships and I simply haven’t had time to complain about how giving Movie
Hawkeye the Ultimate Hawkeye’s family and not having him be with Mockingbird – which is how it should be – oh look, now
I have. But seriously I waited three films and pages and pages of Peggy/Cap
shippers’ posts for this moment, Captain America’s OTP (get over it Tony/Steve
fans) is finally acknowledged in the movie universe - Steve Rogers and Sharon
Carter. And it was enhanced by amusing scenes featuring Falcon, Winter Soldier
and a Volkswagen Beetle.

8. Tom Holland as Peter Parker

It’s like they took Steve
Ditko’s Peter Parker and John Romita’s Peter Parker and squished them into one
human. I often complain about casting in live action things based on comics
because it continues to befuddle me how people who cast for a living cannot
match a person to a picture, I’m not a casting director and I can tell if
someone looks like someone else so why can’t they? I really wouldn’t want the
casting team behind Gotham working for the police (ironic?), “why have you had
this man arrested, he looks nothing like our photo fit?” “Well he’s a man, and
he’s American, that’s good enough right?”. Holland almost makes up for making
Aunt May sexy, really I’d’ve thought that if one Marvel character was immune to
being sexied up it would have been Aunt fucking May, but then Gotham made
Bullock and The Penguin sexy2
so I should have known no one was safe.

9. Aunt May’ Meat Loaf

This is not a euphemism,
though probably will be now Aunt May is ridiculously sexy, but Tony Stark is waiting
for Peter Parker to come home in this film and what’s he eating (because Movie
Tony Stark is never not eating)? Aunt May’s famous meat loaf. When did this
become a thing? I can’t remember when it wasn’t a thing and I’m certainly not
trawling through hundreds of Spider-Man issues to find out the first mention of
Aunt May’s ‘unique’ meat loaf but I’m sure it dates back to Stan Lee’s run
as scripter. It’s such a little thing,
but it’s the little things – like oooh say a Spider Signal? – that make the
Marvel Cinematic Universe just so much better than any other company’s comic
book adaptations, except Iron Man 3, no amount of little things, nor even my
secret love of Gwyneth Paltrow, well formerly secret love, could make me like
that piece of shit.

10. It Made Me Like a Marvel Story Called Civil War

This may not seem like a
big deal to you imaginary readers because you don’t know me personally, or at
all, but I HATE Civil War the comic book and I am very open about this, I
dislike the thing so much that ‘it’s only a comic book’ is actually an
acceptable and appropriate thing to say, I should not be this angry at a comic
book after this many years. But I LOVED this film. Everything that annoyed me
about Civil War, this film didn’t do – which is probably really guiling if
you’re a fan of the book – this was, for me, Civil War done right, it still hit
most of the plot points of Civil War – an accident caused by a superhero team
causes an outcry, a legislation is put through to limit their ability to
perform, Captain America disagrees with it on principle, Iron Man supports it on
principle and the other heroes choose sides, there’s a big fight, hell Iron Man
even imprisons his friends, but the way it did these things, the better
writing, the subtlety, the sympathetic portrayal of both sides, the things they
took the time to do that Millar and the other fighting writers of the comics
didn’t do, hell that the characters stayed in character, I’m not going to turn
this into a rant against Civil War the comic because I’m too tired at the
moment and you really don’t want to hear it, but yeah the best thing about this
film for me is that it made me like Civil War, albeit the movie version.

1
I’m not just being randomly racist; the CEO of Marvel Comics – Ike Perlmutter –
really implied that when responding to the change of actor for James Rhoades.

2
the continual references to Gotham is because I’ve only just started watching
season 1, I generally put off watching anything live action and DC because I
usually hate it (I haven’t seen Superman Vs Batman yet, I will, sometime, under
protest) but I was so impressed by The Flash season 1 (Linda Park is the best
piece of casting in a live action DC anything, yes better than Jack Nicholson
as the Joker, better even than Frank Gorshin as the Riddler) I thought I’d give
Gotham a try. I’m not too pleased so far, but mostly I would like to know why
the whole production team is deathly afraid of moustaches.

Saturday, 23 April 2016

Street Sharks are easily in
my top five action figures, I’m pleased to see them developing the cult
following such good quality toys deserve, but of course we’re not here to talk
about those, nah, we’re here to talk about 3” knock-offs frankensteined from
their parts. Meet the Ocean Warriors: The Warriors Powered by Ocean:

Figurerealm.com dates these as coming from 2000, I personally think that’s a little late –
Street Sharks lasted for a surprisingly
long time, around three years and six waves of figures but their time was well
and truly over by 1998, let alone 2000, so I can’t see anyone bothering to
release knock-offs of them that late in the day, however as these are made from
parts from the third and fourth waves of Street Sharks they must have come out
fairly late in the day, I’d put them around 1997 personally but officially the
only date we have for them that isn’t from the mind of some shitty blogger is
2000. You’ll also see them commonly referred to as Mannix figures, this
is…complicated – the company name Mannix was only used for one line – IWC
International Wrestling Champions – but this line introduced a body mould that
was used for several other lines (Two Face Monster, Monster Maniacs, Apes
Attacks etc) that were put out under other company names, exactly how all these
lines connect is something of a mystery still being unravelled, regardless the
company name Action is on the Ocean Warrior cards. Also I will mention that
each of these figures came with guns, mine don’t have these weapons because I
bought them loose and as the Street Sharks don’t have signature weapons (and
the original toys didn’t come with any accessories) I wasn’t bothered, you can
see their guns on card art below though.

The card art also shows off
nicely that none of these characters have names, that is common for Mannix
related figures and I refer to them by the names of their official figure
counterparts but that isn’t going to work here so, um, let’s call them Bob,
Chuck, Dave and…um… Ralph.

Streex

Fun fact, Streex wasn’t
called Streex in the toyline until his third
figure; previously he’d gone under the name ‘Blades’. Bob from Ocean Warriors
is literally half Streex and half Blades, his upper half is a shrunken down
version of Streex (having examined these figures I’m leaning towards these
being moulded from the original toys then shrunken and modified, everything’s
just too well placed to be copied) while his lower half is from Blades and
paint job from the series 2 version of Blades. I greatly enjoy this about these
figures, I think I just get enjoyment of recognising things - I’m the sort of
person who likes to go through huge group shots in comics and name all the
characters – so maybe it’s more just because I’m cripplingly sad but whatever
it may be, I enjoy ‘kit-bashed’ figures, part reuse and repaints, I like how
you can transform and disguise thing simply by changing their colour and y’know
I just think it’s fun to see character in ridiculous colour schemes. Something amused
me (and we’re back to being crippling sad here) is that Bob has Streex’s
muscles painted as if they’re part of his top, I like it when this sort of
thing happens to, when one thing is used to represent another, either
intentionally or in this case, completely unintentionally (Toy Biz did this
with characters heads, Polaris for
instance, is Rogue’s head).

Jet Pack Jab

The least modified Ocean
Warrior, Chuck is just a shrunken down version of Jet Pack Jab from the fourth
series of Street Shark toys. Happily Jet Pack Jab was my favourite Street
Sharks figure as a child so I’m good with this – Jab was always my preferred
'Shark because he was just Raphael but a shark, but then Mattel seemingly
merged him with a fighter plane turning him into a bronze flying metal hammerhead shark with a fucking jet pack.
‘Action’ have managed to differentiate Chuck form his inspiration by… removing
the rivets from Jet Pack Jab’s teeth and putting them on his gloves, and taking
off the numbers from his fin and shoulders, and you know what I bet legally
speaking that is actually enough, also he’s a different colour and you know I’d
love a proper Jet Pack Jab in silver, however Action’s paint job does remove
some of the inexplicable weirdness that makes JPJ so appealing to me, the
Mattel colours imply that somehow Jab now has metal for skin and is wearing
trousers, Chuck is far more likely either a robot or wearing armour, it’s kind
of weird when the bootleg makes more sense.

Moby Lick

I have done studies and
these studies show that literally every boy in the UK owned a Moby Lick, he’s
easily the ‘Shark (well Orca) I see the most being sold second hand and he was
in the house of every kid I knew at school, either 90’s kids loved Killer
Whales and I never knew or he was the figure most commonly found at a
discounted price. Moby Lick, whose name is such a bad pun you’d think he
belonged in He-Man, was a construction worker who was turned into a killer
whale with a huge tongue – I love cartoons. ‘Action’ wisely removed the
trademarkable tongue and then just made the rest of him from bits from Chuck
and Bob, thus while Dave looks the most like his Street Sharks counterpart at
first glance, he’s actually pretty damn different, firstly no attempt was made
to follow his colour scheme beyond his face and no other Moby Lick parts were
stolen, using Blades bottom half and Jet Pack Jab’s arms instead and can we
just taken a minute to appreciate how cool a Killer Whale Man with metal arms
is please? …

…

…

Thank you. The colours
scheme’s odd by the way, making him look like he’s wearing ski boots, a really
expensive watch and no trousers.

Slobster

The earliest Street Sharks
toy to be stolen from (well with Blade's bottom half), and the most modified – the other Ocean Warriors seem to
clearly have been moulded from Street Sharks ‘Action’ bought at a local Toys 'R' Us but Ralph seems to have had his whole face and chest remodelled, his face is
wider and he’s grown some abs, his antennae have also been shortened,
presumably so they could be made on the same tool as the rest of the body, in fact
I’d go so far as to say that it’s an entirely newly sculpted piece and so with
the rest of the figure being taken from other figures who aren’t Slobster this
is easily the most unique looking Ocean Warrior. Of course with Ralph getting
arms taken from Streex and a lower half from Jet Pack Jab he’s still 75 percent
stolen, but he has a completely original paint job. Actually, on being
different, Ralph is the only figure that feels the same as his ‘inspiration’,
one of the many good things about Street Sharks figures is that they had
‘shark-like skin’, a rubber layer, over their body so they all feel slightly
squishy, however the villains didn’t have this feature (nor did Mantaman or
Radical Bends) so Slobster and Ralph feel the same, the biggest difference in
feel, if you care, is Moby Lick & Dave, because Moby has no ‘chomping’
action feature and thus lacks hard plastic in his jaws and is thus far more
squishy (and I got to use thus twice in one sentence!).

Part Reuse Theatre

Jet Pack Jab's arms

Jet Pack Jab's legs

Streex's arms

Blades' legs

Though not exactly cheap
these are easily the easiest (bad English?) Street Sharks bootlegs to find. Yes
there are multiple Street Sharks bootlegs, for a good laugh check out the
‘Mannix’ Mighty Sharks,
which just cut out Street Sharks heads and stick them on the Mannix body, which
is kind of a mix of vintage Masters of the Universe and Hasbro’s WWF. I also
find Ocean Warriors to be the best Street Sharks knock-offs, Mattel didn’t repaint these
four figures, nor did they produce ‘Sharks in many scales (there was a 10”
Ripster and a couple of riders for Hot Wheels Smash N Crash bikes) so Ocean
Warriors actually manages to fill a hole left by the official line, which is
where the best bootleg lines shine – i.e. Galaxy Fighters bringing in styles of
He-man characters that Mattel never produced (werewolf, Spartan, dinosaur,
Viking…). And I’m done, thanks for reading about action figures that flaunt
copyright laws about as much as action figures possibly can, and sorry it
wasn’t very funny, I’m just not a very funny mood today.

Friday, 15 April 2016

This was supposed to be posted on Monday, things happened (nothing bad, just exhausting), so it wasn't, I suck, apologies. Anyway, one of the many good things
about listening to the Attitude Era Podcast is that it’s finally made me
a fan of Stone Cold Steve Austin, handy as Stone Cold is getting several
figures around now. He’s getting a 12” figure, a Defining Moments figure; he’s
in this Battle Pack and is coming again in another Battle Pack in series 40
with Mr McMahon. All of these Austins are damn good, so you may be asking “why
did you buy this pack dwitefry?” (well you would if you existed) “Why not buy
the Defining Moments Austin?” well I looked at that figure and realised that
there wasn’t anything in it that I actually needed and I really don’t think it
represents a defining moment for him – if they’d have gone the whole hog and
packaged him with a Zamboni, or given him a base to make him look like he was
standing on a beer truck, or even given him some swappable hands so he was
giving the fingers, then I’d’ve happily forked over the cash, this set however
includes a bonus Bret Hart.

Yeah so this is a two pack
from the Mattel’s WWE Wrestlemania Series 32, one of the many MANY different
sub-lines that make up Mattel’s WWE retail line of action figures, Wrestlemania
is just a themed variant on their standard WWE line that are roughly the
‘basic’ figures but commemorating various Wrestlemania Pay-Per-View events of
old. This particular set is commemorating the fantastic submission match
between Austin and Hart at Wrestlemania 13, one of the best matches in
Wrestlemania history and one of my favourite matches in wrestling, I’m watching
it right now.

Stone Cold Steve Austin,
one of the biggest stars the WWF/WWE has ever had, was played by Steven James
Anderson who had also wrestled as Stunning Steve Austin in WCW before being fired
for *snicker* not being marketable (and for injuring himself, something he did
a lot) and ECW as Superstar Steve Austin. He initially came to WWF as The
Ringmaster but thankfully got permission to use his idea of a hard, no-nonsense
serial killer type which his wife inadvertently named Stone Cold Steve Austin
when telling him to drink his tea or it would get ‘stone cold’ (now you can all
imagine Steve Austin drinking tea). After receiving the win at the 1996 King of
the Ring because the scheduled winner Triple H was being punished for something
else, Austin, still a heel (villain), busted out a now iconic promo on Jake the
Snake that introduced his Austin 3:16 catchphrase and began a rise to
superstardom, a rise helped by a year-long feud with Bret Hart and his family,
that’s where this set comes in. Austin would go on become the most profitable
wrestler WWF has had apparently.

This is one of Mattel’s
‘basic level’ WWE figures so it lacks thigh swivel and an ab-crunch and
features only one articulation point at the knees and elbows, if you’ve read
any of my previous WWE figures you’ll know (if you existed) that I hate thigh
swivels and don’t care for the type of ab crunch Mattel typically use on their
WWE fighters so you’ll know I don’t mind this at all, however in fairness to
the joint (a strange statement I agree) Austin is the kind of design who could
easily have a thigh swivel thanks to not having anything it could disrupt,
though I’d still much rather have ball joints at the crotch. I still like the
combined swivel/hinge jointed wrists and they allow Austin to perform a Stunner
– which is the only requirement of articulation on a Stone Cold Steve Austin
figure really – but they do seem fairly obvious on this figure, with a bigger
gap, I think that’s the fault of the forearm pieces though which really don’t
transition that well into the larger hand pieces. The likeness then, from front
on it can look a little off but from the side or most angles it looks perfect thus
I’m dubbing it ‘pretty damn great’ rather than ‘amazing’ (like Rick Flair’s),
it’s also made me notice something I’ve been completely oblivious of my whole
life – Steve Austin has no eyebrows! It’s because he’s blonde (my dad, who
looked like Steve Austin actually, has the same issue) so what little eyebrows
he has doesn’t show up but now I will never be able to not notice that, oh and
the head is limited articulation wise due to his massive fucking neck. The pack
includes no accessories, I’m guessing his vest was probably too expensive due
to paint apps but they could have given him a can of beer couldn’t they? He
does have a knee brace though, this is just for accuracy as he was wearing one
in the match but I love it for other, nerdier, reasons; Austin was so often
injured it’s kind of become a bit of a fandom in-joke so I think it’s great
that my figure of him has evidence of an injury on it.

Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart
(real name) alias The Best There Is, The Best There Was, The Best There Ever
Will Be is from the legendary Hart family of wrestlers (he’s the son of Stu
Hart), known for his amazing skill, wearing hot pink and for being screwed over
by Vine McMahon. He came into the WWF in 1985 as part of the Hart Foundation
tag-team with his brother-in-law Jim Neidhart and was both a tag team and
singles star. Having had an excellent feud with his brother Owen as well as great
matches with Shawn Michaels, Hart was actually on hiatus in 1996 when Steve
Austin started a feud with him by slagging him off on TV, leading to the Hitman
coming back after eight months, sadly 1997 ended badly with the ‘Montreal Screwjob’ and him leaving for
WCW to be underutilized and receive a career ending injury.

Bret Hart is one of my
favourite wrestlers and I am a MASSIVE mark for the Hart Foundation as a whole
– Bret, Owen, Davey Boy Smith and Jim Neidhart - but this figure… it doesn’t
quite do it for me, I am glad to have him in this outfit from this match, which
is why I ultimately decided to buy the set even though I will almost certainly
be buying his upcoming Elite figure. I think it’s the hair and face, the
likeness is…iffy, from the side and from any angle looking up it’s pretty
spiffy but front on it pretty much sucks, everything just seeems too...long, frankly it needs some sunglasses to
cover up its deficiencies and this set doesn’t come with them (the head was
originally sculpted for a figure that did, I believe), his hair also looks
really lank and unwashed. Elsewhere though he’s more worthy of praise, his deco
is so sharp you could cut yourself on it and very well done given how
complicated it all is, and the lack of ab crunch and thigh swivel means it
doesn’t get as broken up, allowing me to appreciate it even more (and who
doesn’t like appreciating Bret Hart’s arse). Sadly it’s not all good on the body,
the articulation on his head and elbows are severely limited by his hair and
elbow pads but he can just about perform the Sharpshooter, the Elite’s double
jointed knees and ab crunch should allow him to perform it perfectly though.
It’s a shame that Hart is really relegated to ‘nice bonus’ with a Steve Austin
figure (my theory was that the set was £27 and the Defining Moments Austin was
£24-ish so I was getting a Bret Hart for about £7 in an outfit I really like
and it would do in case I couldn’t find an Elite Hart for a while once it comes
out, as is the issue I’m having with Yokozuna and had with the British
Bulldog).

In conclusion? The issues
with Bret Hart brings down the set as a whole but in hand he’s not as terrible
as he first looked and the little flickers of buyer’s remorse I was genuinely
having have been quashed by finding the perfect angle to display him in and by
Steve Austin being so likeable. Honestly you could probably do better to get
the Defining Moments Austin if you a) don’t love this match or b) don’t need
multiple Bret Harts and a slew of Hart-related merchandise, like I apparently
do, but my dream roster is 100% better now I have the Hitman and the Texas
Rattlesnake, and that’s the bottom line, because Stone Cold said so.

"What th' hell is a Hasbro?""I dunno, but I bet The Rock tried to stuff it up your assat least once""Yeah, what was up with that shit?"1

1 Yeah Dwayne, what WAS up with that shit? I'm hardly the first person to bring this up, but given how Heterosexual Male focused American Professional Wrestling can be, and the...less than enlightened views of the Attitude Era crowd, and Vince McMahon, and half the roster during said era, was and how keen the WWF was to placate these attitudes in the name of controversy, envelope pushing and (most importantly) beating Monday Nitro in the ratings - to the point of having Rowdy Roddy Piper administer what was intended as a heroic gay bashing to 'make a man out of Goldust' just before the era began (utterly atrocious), which the crowd cheered on - and given how American Professional Wrestling is basically barely clothed muscle men rubbing themselves up against each other in creative ways - why was the Rock so keen to talk about shoving anything and everything up 'candy' asses?

Saturday, 9 April 2016

Dark Beaver and Attila the
Frog had really dampened my enthusiasm for the current Playmates TMNT figure
line, in fact I’d go so far as to say they’d put me off it, almost completely.
I’m still greatly enjoying the cartoon but the toys were starting to feel me
with nothing but irritation and disappointment, and then…

Wednesday, 6 April 2016

King Hiss is the third ‘big
bad’ of the He-Man’s world, following Skeletor and Hordak, Hiss leads the Snake
Men and hails from ‘Preternia’, the prehistoric era of He-Man’s planet. His
figure came out in 1986, too late to appear in either the He-Man & the
Masters of the Universe or She-Ra: Princess of Power cartoon, his action
feature was his arms and torso/head clipped off to reveal a snake monster
underneath, his ‘snake torso’. Hiss (now spelt Hssss) got his first action
figure in Masters of the Universe Classics in 2011 but many fans were
unsatisfied, he was based solely on the toy, he had reversed shoulders and his
snake torso was considered lacklustre (despite being accurate to the vintage figure).
Serpentine King Hssss is an extra non-subscription figure for Masters of the
Universe Classics released in March 2016 but delayed from November 2015, from
the 15th to 29th of March it was available at a
discounted price and only to 2015 subscribers on Mattycollector.com via an
e-mailed link as part of a concession to subscribers because the release is
built around a cut item (the torso) and is a very controversial solution to
that item being cut. If that’s all you needed to know before reading my
thoughts on this, King Hiss’ ‘true form’, as a figure, please skip the
following paragraph.

Monday, 4 April 2016

You know and I know that your review is
only half the review that mine is - and mine has half the brain that yours do

So Smyths Toys had a sort of
semi-unofficial Easter sale on when I popped into their Lakeside branch after
spending three hours in Ikea, which
was nice as it allowed me to catch up some on Playmates TMNT and Mattel WWE
without breaking the bank, or having to build it afterwards with instructions
in Swedish. Marked down were Sycho Sid, who I’ll be calling just Sid from now
on because it doesn’t make my spellcheck cry, which was no surprise as he’s
been group peg warming since before Christmas and SHEIKY BABY.

Sunday, 3 April 2016

Boot sale season has begun!
Again, for the imaginary American readers a Car Boot Sale, usually just shorted
to ‘boot sale’, is an outdoor flea market though closer to a kind of communal
yard sale as, although there are regulars, anyone can come and sell you their old
crap, and they do, in droves. Today was the first week for my current favourite bootsale because
rain stopped play last week and it was cancelled, so I dragged me mother up
there for 7am to go and spend way too much money on dirty toys and dusty
records. I always like to ‘bootsail’ with someone because I find it shames me
into staying vaguely sensible with my purchases, and because I can’t drive.

It turned out to be a
pretty fruitful experience, though I will concede that much of this was due to
one new toy stall run by a woman who endeared herself to me until she started using
the sentence ‘this is rare and collectible’ as a prelude to asking for a price
she knew would seem more than I’d consider reasonable – this pisses me off and I
will just say ‘no it’s not’ and tell them the truth and ignore their offended
looks saying “how dare you disagree with me, I’ve seen an episode of Toy
Hunter!” because no seller ever says it about anything that is actually is a sought after or rare item and they
always say it like they’re informing me for my own good: it insults my
intelligence and makes the seller look ill-informed and/or dishonest. Anyway this
particular woman did me a fairly decent deal, twice, and was marginally more
informed than the usual silly bastards who whip out such lines so I can’t
complain too much, though she did tell me the Jurassic Park Glider Pack I bought
was complete – and rare and collectible – and it was none of these things. On a
happier note I had the most surprisingly spicy samosa AND I came home with
around 35 new things, some of the following I will now drone on about: